Month: January 2017

Neal Shusterman writes YA science fiction, but this novel is a bit of a departure for him. It is realistic fiction, but has elements of fantasy, as his main character, Caden, navigates the treacherous waters of mental illness. Sometimes Caden is in the real world with his parents and friends; other times he is on a mysterious pirate ship that is sailing for the Challenger Deep, the deepest place on Earth.

Shusterman was inspired by his own son’s experience with mental illness, and the novel is illustrated with some of his artwork. Caden is an artist who finds his control over his art falling apart as things spiral out of control around him, and the drawings capture that feeling. I have my own struggles with anxiety and depression, and there was one day within the last year when I was at work and feeling incredibly sad and on the verge of losing control. I sat at my desk and began to doodle a twisting, densely convoluted scribble that mirrored what was going on in my head.

In fact, it was frightening just how much I identified with Caden. I think we all have moments when our control of our thoughts feels tenuous. Mental illnesses do not fit into neat little boxes; the human mind exists on a continuum that is ever in flux. We all exhibit some tendencies toward obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, autism, etc. No one mind is exactly like any other, and our minds evolve as we grow older. Brain chemistry can get out of whack. Experiences can forge new neural pathways. Therapy (and reading!) can help us make sense of what we are feeling and reframe things in our minds.

I love science, but I don’t really like math, so I enjoy reading popular science books because you get all the cool stuff about science with out all the numbers. I even have favorite science authors, just like other people have favorite fiction authors. (Yes, I am a huge nerd!).

One of my favorites is Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and science rock star. Tyson hosted the reboot of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” and has his own talk show, “Star Talk” on radio and the National Geographic Channel. If you don’t already follow him on Twitter and/or Facebook, you’re missing out. His comments are trenchant and funny and he makes no apologies for rejecting sloppy logic. In a world where critical thinking skills seem to be lacking more and more each day, this is refreshing.

This book is a collection of essays he wrote over the years as a columnist for Natural History magazine, the publication of the American Natural History Museum. Tyson covers topics such as black holes, the historical conflict between scientific and religious views, stellar evolution, the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, and even what movies get wrong about astrophysics and astronomy. Some of the subjects are complex, but Tyson has a knack for explaining things simply and with humor.

What better time to read a book about the character of America than in a time when many of us no longer recognize our own country? While a great deal of the action in Americanah takes place in Nigeria, and both main characters are Nigerian, the third character in the story is America itself. What does it mean to be an American, an immigrant in America, a black person in America, a woman in America?

Ifemelu leaves Nigeria during yet another academic strike, unable to complete her degree at home. She comes to Princeton, where she struggles to understand race dynamics and find a job — any job — to pay for her rent. She spends time with other African ex-pats, white Americans, and African Americans, learning to negotiate the strange racial and class structure of American society.

Not long before starting this novel, I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahesi Coates. Written as a letter to his son, Coates tries to explain what it is like being a black man in America. Both books gave me, a white woman, a new perspective on my own country. There are so many subtle ways that racism rears its head that are easy to overlook if you happen to have been born with light skin.

I fear that such occurrences will become more frequent and more ugly, given the character of the people poised to take over the reins of government. We must all be more vigilant, not only of others, but of our own thoughts and actions, of the things we may do without thinking.

One of my favorite parts of Americanah was the scene where Ifemelu and her American friends are watching the 2008 presidential election unfold in real time. How much hope and excitement and promise we all felt then! How limitless the future seemed, when a dark-skinned man became our president. Surely, we thought, things are getting better. Surely, the darkness will fade. How poignant it is to read of this hope just days before Barack Obama leaves office, as our nation teeters on the brink of plunging into darkness.

I have always loved horses. As a child I played more with my Breyer model horses than with dolls. I read everything written by Marguerite Henry and Walter Farley. Among all the breeds and equestrian disciplines I read about, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Lipizzaner and the haute ecole they perform at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. I read White Stallion of Lippiza by Henry and the autobiography of Alois Podhajsky, the director of the Spanish Riding School, and I saw the Disney movie Miracle of the White Stallions, which dramatized the U.S. Army’s role in rescuing the Lippizaner from the Nazis and the Soviets. I thought I knew what had happened to these horses during World War II … but I was wrong.

For one thing, the Lipizzaner was not the only breed of horse targeted by the Nazi scheme to breed the perfect war horse. The magnificently bred Polish Arabians were also coveted by Gustav Rau, the chief equerry of Germany and master of the horse, who dreamed of creating a legion of war horses to help the Third Reich crush resistance across Europe. One of these Polish Arabians was the young stallion Witez, whose name was familiar to me. I am not an expert on Arabian bloodlines by any means, but I knew this name. I was intrigued.

Witez, and many other purebred horses, including Lipizzaner mares and foals, were taken from their homes and placed at a German stud farm in Hostau, Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, Alois Podhajsky was trying to protect the precious Lipizzaner stallions at the Riding School in Vienna. As the war neared its end, Vienna was being bombed and the stallions were in mortal danger. Hostau was in the path of the Red Army, known to summarily slaughter and eat any horses it came across. The German officers at the Hostau farm knew the only hope of saving these precious horses lay with the American troops that were closing in from the west.

In the Disney movie, it was General George S. Patton who saved the Lipizzaner stallions, but in reality, he merely gave his blessing to Colonel Hank Reed of the U.S. Cavalry to launch a rescue mission. The plan nearly fell through several times, but in the end, most of the horses were saved, including Podhajsky’s stallions.

And Witez? He ended up coming to the United States as the spoils of war and spent some time at the Army Remount station in Pomona, California, which had originally been the famous Kellogg Arabian Farm … and is now the campus of Cal Poly Pomona. Arabian horses are still bred by the university, and it was on a visit to the monthly horse shows put on for the public that I had originally seen the name Witez.

This was a Christmas present to myself. I love musical theater, and I love to read about things I’m interested in, so I have always been a sucker for “behind the scenes” books about shows I’ve seen (or in this case want to see). I was expecting something similar to the books I’d read about Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, etc. but this book truly blew me away.

First of all, it is beautiful, with a faux leather half binding and thick paper with deckled edges. Physically, it looks like something that Hamilton himself could have had on his shelf. It has heft and just feels amazing to the hands. I have a collection of Folio Society books, which are beautifully made and bound, and I would not hesitate to place this book beside them on the shelf. It’s that lovely.

Most books about Broadway productions tuck the libretto in the back, almost as an appendix, but Hamilton : the Revolution intersperses it between chapters, very much like the documentary Hamilton’s America toggled back and forth between telling the story of Hamilton the man and Hamilton the musical. The best feature of the book is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s footnotes to the libretto, explaining the inside jokes in the lyrics and some of the decision making behind the songs.

After reading this book, I have a deeper appreciation of the musical. Now I just have to save up enough money to (hopefully) get tickets when it comes to L.A. later this year …

Two years ago, I took the Goodreads Reading Challenge, setting myself a goal of reading 100 books. I fell a few short, and set the same goal for 2016. I squeaked under the wire, finishing my 100th book on December 30th. This year, I set my Goodreads goal at 100 books yet again, but that’s not my only reading goal for 2017.

Sheer number of books is impressive, but this year I want to strive for more quality. In short, I want to read more “grown up” books. I read a lot (I mean A LOT) of YA fiction as part of my job, and while I enjoy these books immensely, sometimes I feel like I should be reading more serious literature than I do. My goal is to read at least 10 adult novels this year, in addition to the YA that surrounds me every day. That’s less than one per month, a very doable goal.